One of the major concerns and preoccupation with child care is safety. Until the child reaches an age of a toddler, safety and proper nutrition are chief concerns. During toddlerhood phase, other development factors begin to play a greater role. However, issues involving safety do not go away at this stage, only intensify. In fact, while concerns involving child care continue to evolve as a child grows, with some concerns getting displaced by others, issues involving safety never become secondary.
During infancy and toddlerhood, two activities become very routine. One is bathing and the other is feeding. Both activities are vital to a healthy development of a child, and yet both are fraught with danger. Parents and childcare workers must be highly alert and vigilant while a child in their care is enjoying his routine bath or a regular meal. A child may be playful and carefree. But a parent or a child care worker is all too aware, that the difference between humdrum and tragedy is one brief unfortunate moment of inattention.
To address known risks, the legislative body developed an area of law specifically dedicated to regulating products intended to be used by children and for children. There is an enormous industry providing solutions to safety concerns. Yet, despite the prominence of the topic of child safety, devices designed to address safety concerns during routine bathing still do not adequately balance issues of safety, cost and practicality.
Presently the area of art dealing with bathing safety is split between highly costly and sophisticated adaptations for the developmentally and psychologically disabled and mainstream devices that offer minimal, if any, safety features. Parents and child care workers have come to terms with the latter shortcoming by compensating with increased vigilance, which at times still leads to near drowning incidents or worse.